Is the Internet of Things Going To Steal Your Job?

Should you be worried?

Ongoing IoT developments coupled with incredible advancements in automation and other new technologies certainly opens up unparalleled opportunities for businesses across all industries, but should employees be worried that their jobs will no longer exist in the coming years? All through history, reports of the demise of jobs due to technology have been momentously exaggerated. In most cases, advancements have created more jobs. This notion is called the “Luddite Fallacy”, referring to past fears that machines would take human jobs away.

Here’s the thing: present and future IoT innovations are expected to radically disrupt the operations of businesses in virtually every industry. And while the short-term results are projected to be more-or-less exclusively positive, long-term plans for massive increases in large scale automation and much deeper immersion of IoT in our cities certainly does threaten a broad range of jobs that just won’t exist in 10 years or less.

We can already see the effects of IoT on a myriad of industries, and there are certainly very compelling reasons to trust predictions that a growing number of jobs will become obsolete in the not-too-distant future. However, before we start to panic, it’s important to realize that this fact is balanced by the increasing need for people who possess entirely new skills to fill roles that materialize in companies as a result of technological advancements. Most industry analysts agree that many trades will become superseded, or outdated as IoT grows. However, at the same time, new fields and expertise will emerge. Growth in field services, asset management, robotic maintenance, remote diagnostics, and analytics expertise will counterbalance job losses affected by the emergence of IoT.

So many questions are created by these exciting technologies. Is the deployment of new technologies and IoT going to lead to more people in the unemployment line or more potential for business and job growth? A research paper titled, “The Future of Employment” by Oxford University academics Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne contained a list of occupations with an automation probability score, along with an overall estimation that 47% of U.S. employment is in the “high risk” category. According to their methodology, the top 10 most likely jobs to be automated in the future include telemarketers, cooks, dental technicians, and estate agents. And this is just the tip of the iceberg, as the Internet of Things continues to change the manner in which people conduct their daily lives, thereby altering the way businesses are run.

In 5 years, our world will be profoundly different due to the immersion of IoT in practically every aspect of our communities, and it’s challenging to even predict how far these technologies will take us in 10 or 20 years. However, one thing remains certain — the Internet of Things is already disrupting the majority of industries, while ongoing collaborations between global innovators and technology consultancy experts carry the potential to change our societies more than can possibly be imagined.